You know those times when you know that you have some sort of special memory tied to a particular song, and you really don’t know what that memory is until you start thinking about it, and then when you realize what the memory was, you feel like a train just ran over your heart? Well that’s the way I felt about Iron & Wine’s song Flightless Bird, American Mouth. For some reason, the song sounded intensely familiar when I listened to it a while back, and I could not for the life of me figure out the feeling of bittersweet warmth that could only partially be explained by the melodic qualities of the song. So through my powers of deduction, I tried to figure out where I had heard this song before.
Here is my thought process: The song uses a waltz-style 3/4 beat, and the most famous waltz that I know is the Blue Danube Waltz, which was written by Johann Strauss, who was born in Austria, and Adolf Hitler was also born in Austria, and Hitler rose to power in Bavaria, and in Bavaria there is the Neuschwanstein Castle, which was the inspiration for the Disney Castles, the most famous of which is located in Los Angeles, and recently Conan O’Brien moved to LA, and the Tonight Show had Chicago on two nights ago, and Barack Obama is from Chicago, and President Obama recently had a Bud Light with officer Crowley and professor Gates, and Bud Lights are usually served at college parties, which often end up with someone crying their heart out in a drunken mess, tears are often associated with rainy days, it’s very rainy in the Pacific Northwest, you take Northwest to travel around the US, I like to travel on airplanes, I like to travel to Prague, Prague is used as a location for many movies, movies including Blade and Underworld, which have vampires in them, vampires that are awesome unlike the sparkly vampires of Twili-OH MY GOD I HEARD THE SONG IN THE PROM SCENE FROM TWILIGHT! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! WHY, IRON & WINE, WHY???
I associated warm happy feelings with Twilight. I feel dirty now.
Also, I just checked my iTunes Genius Recommendations for the song. There are two Linkin Park songs. And a Britney Spears song.
Being Arbitrary 